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How to offer free report and collect email addresses

  1. mindandbodyflow
    Member

    I would like to put a box in the sidebar that says, "5 Fascinating Case Studies" Click here to download... or some such thing. After clicking on the link, site visitors would be taken to a form where they would fill in their name and email address in order to receive the report. The information would then go into a database of people who have opted in to receive my newsletter.

    I have tried to figure out how to do that on WordPress, but I cannot find a topic that looks like it relates.

    The blog I need help with is mindandbodyflow.wordpress.com.

  2. timethief
    Member

    Forms are stripped out vy the software to preserve security on this multi-user blogging platform. However, wordpress.com does provide a contact form you can use. See here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/

    You may also want to look at these entries:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/uploading-documents/
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/scribd/

  3. timethief
    Member

    WordPress.com provides a blog subscription feature that can be used as a newsletter feature or a way to send updates to readers via email. You can let people subscribe to your newsletter by adding the blog subscription widget to your sidebar.

    We could set up a blog that’s strictly for newsletters and then set up a blog subscription widget on the blog. Every post in the blog would be a newsletter and subscribers get the newsletters by email. http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/blog-subscription-widget/

    Tip from WordPress.com Support Documentation:

    Companies may want to create a specific blog to use just for newsletters. If you already own a domain name, you could even get a subdomain such as newsletters.mycompany.com. See the subdomains help page for more details about custom subdomains.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-subdomain/

  4. mindandbodyflow
    Member

    Thank you for your reply! You've offered some great ideas!

  5. timethief
    Member

    You're welcome. :)

  6. mindandbodyflow
    Member

    I'll start with offering apologies in advance for any stupid questions I may be asking.
    :-)

    I think I understand how the above suggestions work, but I don't think it's going to work for what I want to do. For instance, I already have the subscription widget on my blog. I can't see how to use that or the other features to accomplish what I want:

    People would opt in - by providing their name and email address - to receive a bi-weekly tip sheet over a period of a few weeks. Optionally, they can also receive a paper on 5 case studies. I would need their name and email address in order to do this.

    For me, making it all automatic is the important part. For instance, my friend uses Webvalence on her website (it's not a blog). Without being able to use a plugin on WordPress, I can't see how else to do this.

    But perhaps I'm missing something and there is a way of achieving what I'm looking to achieve?

  7. raincoaster
    Member

    The contact form is not optimized to do this automatically, no. What you can do is send the emails it generates to your email and automatically apply a filter to them, then go in and connect them manually. It's a bit more work, but worth it.

  8. mindandbodyflow
    Member

    OK, raincoaster. So I could invite people to opt-in on a page at the top of my site. They would do that by filling in the contact form. The form from that page could be filtered out. And from there, I could put them in the system manually.

    At this point, it looks like this may be the only way I'll be able to do that, but it should work. Would you happen to know if systems like Constant Contact or webvalence can be "fed" manually? Or do you have to have the opt-in form in the website?

    Thank you for this.

    BTW, I like your avatar.

    Joan :-)

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